When prodded for some details about his biography Michel Henry responded:
I would like to tell you how much I feel stripped away by the very idea of a biography. For one who thinks that the true self for us all is a no-worldly self, foreign to every empirical or objective determination, the attempt to approach him through these kinds of reference points seems to be problematic. The history of a man, the circumstances which surround him, are they anything other than a sort of mask, more or less flattering, that he and others agree to put on his face–he who, at bottom, has no face.
I think I like this…
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Do you have a reference for this? The broader piece might be interesting to read.
Isn’t this Harman’s sealed and receding object?
Or a kind apophasis, Negative Theology applied to the microcosm. Viva la via negativa!
hey Shahar, i too am interested in knowing where this “reply” came from… good stuff.
Sure, here’s the reference. I came across the quote initially in the preface to last year’s translation of Material Phenomenology(Fordham UP, 2008), p ix-x. However, if you want to see the broader context, the original statement comes from this essay (which at least for me was a hassle to track down for some reason): Un philosophie parle de sa vie (Entretien avec Roland Vaschalde) in Entretiens (Arles: Sulliver, 2005), p11.